Brightspace Attendance

Audience

WSU Faculty teaching in a traditional, blended, online, or ITV environment.

Overview

The Attendance tool enables you to create attendance registers and schemes in your Brightspace courses. Attendance registers are defined by the instructor and, using attendance schemes to define attendance statuses, record student activity and track attendance within your course. The Brightspace Attendance tool includes customizable thresholds for alerting the teacher when attendance issues arise.

Using the Attendance Tool

There are three major pieces that must be considered when using the Brightspace Attendance tool.

1. Defining and selecting the proper attendance scheme The attendance scheme defines the states of attendance you use in your attendance register.
2. Creating the attendance register for your course Attendance registers define when attendance will be taken. You can define your register to include every class meeting or only special days like exams, project presentations, or group work.
3. Recording attendance Once the scheme and register are in place, the teacher uses the Attendance tool to record student attendance.

Creating a New Attendance Register

Figure 1. Attendance

Attendance Registers are the entries created to track attendance. You can create multiple registers. Select New Register to begin (Fig 1).

Figure 2. New Attendance Register

1. Add name for register (Fig 1.1).
2. Add Description, if needed.
3. Select Scheme, if needed.
4. Identify Cause for Concern percent, if needed.
5. Decide whether students can view their own attendance.
6. Identify which users will be included.
7. Name Sessions (for example, class dates) (Fig 1.2).

Defining and Selecting Attendance Schemes

The attendance scheme defines the states of attendance you use in your attendance register. There is a default attendance scheme that comes with the Attendance tool that supports the recording of students as "Present" or "Absent." Instructors have the option of creating a custom scheme that could include additional attendance states like "Tardy" or "Excused."

You can create as many schemes as you like, but only one attendance scheme will be used with each attendance register.

To access the attendance schemes, go to the Assessment menu and select Attendance tool. The registers will be located on the Attendance Schemes tab. You will go here to:

• Create new attendance schemes
• Select a new default scheme for this course
• Edit the content of the scheme (by clicking on the scheme name)

For more information on creating and maintaining attendance registers, defining sessions, and setting the Cause for Concern threshold (including step-by-step instructions), refer to Manage Attendance schemes and statuses from the D2L Brightspace Help documents.

Creating and Maintaining Attendance Registers

Attendance registers define when attendance will be taken. Attendance registers include a list of students and a list of sessions (class meetings), arranged in table. Also in the table is a recap of the attendance for each student by states in the scheme, and the percentage of attendance. If the student's percentage of attendance is below the Cause for Concern threshold, a triangle with an exclamation point appears after the percentage.

To access the attendance registers, go to the Assessment menu and select Attendance tool. The registers will be located on the Attendance Registers tab. You will go here to:

• Create a new register
• Change the definition of the register (click the arrow after the Register name and select Edit) - these changes could include adding sessions, changing the Cause for Concern threshold, changing the scheme, granting/denying student view access to their own attendance, or updating the list of students in the register

For more information on creating and maintaining attendance registers, defining sessions, and monitoring the Cause for Concern threshold (including step-by-step instructions), refer to Manage Attendance Registers & Sessions from the D2L Brightspace Help documents.

Figure 3. Recording Attendance

Recording Attendance Data

Attendance data is recorded in the Register. Clicking the tablet-and-pencil icon after the name of the session brings up the Set Attendance Data dialog. In this window you can:

• Use the Set Status for All Users button to change the status universally for all students in the register
• Set individual attendance by changing the value in the pulldown in the Attendance Status column (The values in the pulldown come directly from the attendance scheme.)

To access the attendance registers, go to the Assessment menu and select Attendance tool. The registers will be located on the Attendance Registers tab. You will go here to:

• Take attendance (click on the arrow after the Register name, select Attendance Data. and then the tablet-and-pencil icon after the Sessions name in the top row of the table)

For more information on creating and maintaining attendance registers, defining sessions, and setting the Cause for Concern threshold (including step-by-step instructions), refer to Manage Attendance Data from the D2L Brightspace Help documents.

Best Practices

• You can define multiple attendance registers in a course. This may come in handy if you wish to record separate data for attendance for group workdays and attendance for presentation days.
• You may find it easier to use the Set Status for All Users button to set everyone on the course to Present and then go back to change the status of the absent students to Absent.
• At this point, there is no direct conduit between Attendance and Grades so while the Attendance tool is a quick and easy way to record student attendance, actual attendance grades must be recorded manually in the grade book. (Total transparency: There is a mechanism for exporting attendance data from the Attendance tool as a spreadsheet and importing it into the Grades tool, but it tedious. If you need to do this, contact TLT for assistance.)

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